Sammy leaned down, his hands on the doorframe, his face close to Jamie. Pleasantly he said, “Shut up.”

Then he left Jamie seated in the car, Lester beside him, the nameless man again behind the wheel as Sammy walked down the drive, where he conferred with the Carricks. Then he walked back, slow and easy, and slid in beside Jamie. Without being told the driver put the car into gear and turned back toward Bethlehem. They went up the main street, empty, nothing moving, the summer shadows thrown by the streetlights deep and unmoving. They turned onto the Agassiz road and downshifted for the sharp climb out of town. Jamie shaking with the cold, unable to stop himself. They passed the last few houses, all dark, and then swept along, the bordering woods dark and soft and deep, the slip and ping of gravel flying up behind the car.

Sammy, next to him, spoke into his ear. “You must be feeling pretty shitty.”

Jamie said nothing. His knees jerking, his teeth a loose shaken bowl of bones.

“That’s all right,” Sammy told him. “You’ll feel better after a bit.”

The man Lester spoke up. “You remember what he said? When he came in with his little gun? Hold on boys. Ha-ha. Hold on boys.”

“Shut up,” Sammy told him.

They wound down the other lesser side of Mount Agassiz and onto the broad tableland stretching toward Franconia. The road here straightened. Far behind them, the pale lights of the Carricks’ Ford came after them. A long straight stretch. Sammy spoke up. “Give it the gas, Bishop.”

There it was. It seemed important to Jamie, learning this missing name. As if something were completed. As if named, he might know these men. Odd, he thought: Sammy, Lester and Bishop. Wondered what it was about the driver that kept him on that slight remove, the lacking first name. Some measure of respect perhaps? Maybe Sammy wasn’t the boss of the three after all. Perhaps the silent man. Jamie felt he’d missed something crucial here.

The big Dodge raced down the road, gravel spewing, the headlights a soft wash of color, the color the only warmth in the night.

Sammy put his left hand up, ran it across Jamie’s shoulders, rubbed them through the coat, not roughly. He said, “Pick it up a little, Bishop.”

Then, as the car jumped forward, he grabbed a hard big-twisted handful of Jamie’s jacket and pushed forward, sending Jamie’s head down toward his knees. At the same time Lester did the same on the other side and both men used their other hands to grasp Jamie’s thighs, underneath, just back of his knees. All this in one furious motion that continued as they lifted him up and threw him out of the back of the car.

Face up, in the air. The stars still, distant, a moment suspended. Then down hard to bounce on the back of the Dodge, something in his back or shoulder cracking, and then down harder face first into the road. The diminishing funnel of engine sound from the Dodge the last place he traveled.